Bullets in your pocket
by Spylace
Summary: In a world where Timoteo's sons never died, Sawada Tsunayoshi remained a loser. Yamamoto is only fifteen and Reborn is no longer a child.


**Title: **Bullets in your pocket and razors beneath our tongue  
><strong>Summary: <strong>In a world where Timoteo's sons never died, Sawada Tsunayoshi remained a loser. Yamamoto is only fifteen and Reborn is no longer a child.  
><strong>Rating:<strong> R  
><strong>Pairing: <strong>Reborn/Yamamoto, odd bits of Reborn/Yamamoto Sr. thrown in (weird *_*)  
><strong>Notes:<strong> **Merry Christm****a****s** everyone, 'specially you Yan. Now gimme my present =p  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn  
><strong>Warning: <strong>character death, disturbing themes, shota-con, un-betaed  
><strong>Word count:<strong>2800+

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The constant thwack of ball on bat is getting on his nerves.

Yamamoto Tsuyoshi had always loved baseball. Even back in Naples, murmuring hard to pronounce Italian words with his oriental tongue, he's had one game or another on in the background, mute.

Reborn personally does not see the appeal of sitting in the middle of the crowd, easy pickings for any half-assed thug with a gun. Maybe it reminds the older man of the peaceful days back when he kept his head down and did what he was told. Or maybe he likes to stare at all the happy-faced families and dream of what he could have had had he refused the Nono's proposal.

He breathes out a thin trail of smoke as he stares at one boy in particular, tall and lanky, grinning excitedly as he flashes a bold 'v' at the crowd. But his movements are graceful as that of a hunting cat's, his eyes sharp and almost black in the fierce sunlight. There is also another at the periphery of his vision, glaring at him as though he knows there is something off about a man who sits in the full heat of the summer wearing a suit. If half the boys in Japan are like these, they might as well move their headquarters to Tokyo and call it a day.

_Then again_, he thinks eyeing a mousy boy in the pit tripping over nothing and knocking down the reserve players off the bench. The baseball coach turns away from the field, his smile waning into an apoplectic rage.

Reborn drops his cigarette and grinds it beneath a patented heel, earning disapproving looks from the spectators around him. He ignores them and lightly gets to his feet, moving from row to row as he makes his way to the other side. To a passerby, it may seem as though he has simply grown tired of the game and seeks refreshment, the bathroom or the exit—whichever came first.

He sees Tsuyoshi draw a small piece of paper from his sleeve, quickly folding it into the shape of a flightless crane. The boy hits a homerun, running leisurely from base to base, and in the crescendo of cheers, the crane achieves flight, gliding beneath the bleachers, hidden from sight. An old lady gasps as he curses out loud and breaks out into a run. It doesn't matter if Tsuyoshi sees him now; he already knows that Reborn is there.

He dives for the crane before any well-meaning do-gooder pedestrian can pick it up.

The piece of paper turns out to be waxy gum wrapper, peppermint if he had to guess. Not even poisoned, though that thought might be in line with the thwarted lover in Bianchi. He shudders as the bird unravels in his hand, its tidy head pinched backwards.

There is only one word—'_goodbye_'.

He is almost disappointed.

The next few months he spends searching for Tsuyoshi and his allies. Near the beginning of December, Turmeric, a temporary, forced loan from the CEDEF catches wind of something in Tokyo. Tsuyoshi might have been one of them once but he has gotten lax in the perceived safety of his homeland. He isn't wrong but Vongola's reaches are farther still. To Reborn, it is only a sad reminder of what happens to those who oppose them.

By the time he arrives, the house is a mess.

A corpse leans against the doorway with his larynx pulled out and hanging like a gruesome smile. He kicks it aside in disgust and watches as it topples over with a wet thud revealing yet more bodies piled in the doorway. It's too cold for flies but the smell of blood and iron sits heavy on his tongue. Already, there's a gaunt-looking dog peeking from the corner, its eyes bright and flickering like a windswept candlelight. Reborn sneers at it and it withdraws with the barest whimper, teeth bared.

Ahead, in the little hole that served as the bedroom, Yamamoto Tsuyoshi staged his last stand. Unconsciously, Reborn's hands trace the deep furrows on the walls, hot with traces of dancing blue flames. His sun flames flare in answer, marvelously warm. The rain flames quake and dissipate like smoke. He bows his head in a sign of respect.

Turmeric carefully turns over Tsuyoshi's body with a foot. He shakes his head—"what a waste".

Reborn grunts noncommittally before drawing his gun. A boy stands at the entrance, the same who had struck a homerun at the baseball field, baby-faced and soft-skinned, his movements fluid and graceful even as he hesitates, his woolen cap wilting in his grip. His eyes travel from him to Turmeric, never once settling on the body of Tsuyoshi shared between them.

How, Reborn thinks furiously, had the boy gotten past them without them noticing?

It is then he realizes that this is the real reason why Tsuyoshi left them.

Beside him, he feels Turmeric tense. He puts a restraining hand on the other man and turns him away.

"I'll take care of this."

"But"

"**_Go_**"

Turmeric turns around with great reluctance, ready to call mission success with a slew of other things he shouldn't say out loud. This is what he hates about partners who think they have a mind of their own; they talk too much, never once exercising discretion. Reborn grabs the boy by the elbow and drags him away, their footsteps trailing blood in the fresh cover of snow. Strangely, the boy doesn't resist. He mutters under his breath, "Hasn't Tsuyoshi taught you anything?"

Predictably there is no answer though he shivers when a fat snowflake gets caught between his eyelashes.

"Who are you?" With a start, Reborn realizes that they've never been properly introduced. After chasing Tsuyoshi across thousands of miles, it feels as though he knows everything there is to know about the man. But the Mini-moto was raised an innocent—much as one could be when his whore of a mother left him in a killer's care.

"I'm..." he bites his tongue, a plan coming to fruition. "I was a friend of your father's."

"Where is my father?"

Reborn looks down at him oddly and Yamamoto stares back, his eyes as black as ivies.

"Your father's dead." He says offhand. "Be grateful you're alive."

They duck into a nondescript motel whose owner clicks his tongue at the sight of Reborn and his underage companion but nevertheless slides them a key before returning to his TV. Reborn presses a thin roll of bills on the counter before ushering the boy into the room. Turmeric believes that he has gone to kill the Mini-moto. What he is going to do is much worse.

Turmeric is right about one thing. It is a waste. A waste that Yamamoto Tsuyoshi had to die, a waste that this foundling of a boy, young and untrained, is to be his replacement, the heir to the art that Tsuyoshi alone had mastered.

He returns after overseeing the cleanup, planting evidence of a home invasion gone wrong. All traces of the boy, the undiscovered Yamamoto Junior, they destroy. It is unlikely that the boy attended school once they left Namimori. For those who had seen him, men in suits and money has a way of making memories soft. He swipes Tsuyoshi's sword at the last minute.

Worst case scenario, he can bribe Squalo with it.

He returns with a bag of generic takeout predominated by rice and fried vegetables. Mini-moto is in the showers, still nameless. After finishing his share and letting his cigarette burn down to a stub, he gets up and steps into the bathroom.

Yamamoto stands beneath the spray even when the water has gone cold, the showerhead spurting water like arterial blood off a vein.

Reborn stares dispassionately at the stretch of mold in the corners, resenting the room, the boy, and a man left for dead. They are supposed to stay low, out of sight, out of mind. It doesn't mean that he has to like it.

He takes a scratchy brown towel that the motel provides before throwing it in the trash. No doubt that it will be back on the rack before long like syphilis or something equally contagious. Instead, he wraps the boy in an old bathrobe he sometimes uses to dispose of bodies. Yamamoto shivers, fingers hooking into the seams of his shirt and dotting it with water, his eyes blown, slightly crazed.

Despite the cold shower, he is incredibly warm. Reborn sniffs delicately at his hair, picking out the boy-scent of sweat and dirt lodged in his skin. He wonders if Turmeric knew when he took him that this would happen and scowls because if there is one thing he hates, it is becoming predictable.

But Reborn doesn't turn him away, doesn't resist when Yamamoto kisses him with all the skills of a jittery fifteen-year-old learning the art of seduction on the fly. Reborn gives him high points, laughing before pinning him against the wall like a hapless butterfly, one wrist caught between them and the other flung across the flowery print of the wallpaper, ugly enough that Reborn wouldn't mind paying for it if the motel asks him to compensate for water damage. The boy shudders, oversensitized with shock, adrenaline, grief and being all of fifteen. He is beautiful, bronzed with shoulders wide with the promise of filling out.

Reborn doesn't usually take his victims to bed, he is amoral not suicidal. But there is something about Mini-moto that strikes a chord deep within him. Like the way his head tilts slow as though he is waiting for the next move. The light wrinkle around his eyes, there one moment then gone. Yamamoto reminds him of when he was young and fifteen, taken advantage by an older man. He slides a hand down the water-slick flanks, aroused.

Yamamoto sobs when he takes him deep, fingers carding through his hair.

It is the last time he ever sees the boy cry.

Day seven of Yamamoto's confinement finds him outside, tossing a baseball against the side of the wall. He still looks fragile around the edges, not at all like the desperate young boy who seduced him their first night together.

His thoughts stray treacherously at the light sheen of sweat on his brow.

Reborn wonders what the boy saw that night and what he remembers. If the trauma of his father's death has laid his memories bare and warped it until he squeezed it in a frame that he does understand—Reborn is a friend, he was too late.

Reborn is blameless.

He also knows that if Yamamoto ever figures it out, he will feed him his intestines through a straw.

Tsuyoshi's son is oddly trusting though unlike his late father, has no idea what to do with a sword. Squalo is bitterly disappointed that Tsuyoshi died before he could defeat him and declares Takeshi a loss. It would be a mercy to kill him now. But what Yamamoto lacks in knowledge he makes up with instinct and talent. His reflexes are almost supernatural, his hands remarkably steady as he shoots down the targets one by one.

In another life, a different one, maybe Yamamoto would have inherited his father's arts and become a swordsman. He could have been happy as a baseball player, a devoted son. Even Reborn sees the irony in killing one only to have another take his place.

Yamamoto only asked once who he is. He answered that he was his father's friend. It's true enough; the life of a hired gun isn't conducive to long-lasting relationships. He never brings it up again and Reborn never asks him for his first name. It's sometimes fun guessing and putting down random letters on the forged passports and documentation.

Scrabble in particular is inspiring.

Sometimes after a good tumble, he'll light up and think about his boy-whore cum protégé. He wonders how they must look to others, an aging assassin and a boy not quite sixteen. The women squeeze the boy's cheeks happily enough and coo at him whenever they go out for dinner. Yamamoto is exotic but tall and sufficiently western-looking to pass off as his son. Being called a father never fails to get him hard and Yamamoto laughs sometimes, eyes creased and his fingertips touching the inseam of his thighs. They usually have to vacate their seats before the appetizers make it to the table.

Yamamoto is older now, his shoulders as wide as promised with valleys that bear his mark. Reborn delves his fingers in the boy's asscrack and bites down, blowing hot ash up his spine. He shudders, hips rising instinctively with his pucker still red. Cum dribbles out and he smears it between the boy's thighs, touching himself and teasing the salt from his skin.

Life under Enrico is easy, his brothers indolent and lazy, greedy enough to be swayed by petty rewards, worth less than the crudest sins under the sun. Three years into his reign, Enrico is found dead, hung in his closet by his silk ties.

Squalo smirks when he finds the body and Reborn scowls, knowing that he would put the Decimo's two-year-old son in power before they let Xanxus out of the hole they buried him in. But with Enrico dead, his younger brother Massimo takes the throne of their vast empire. Reborn closes his eyes as he tries to imagine the fat fool commanding anything more than his goddamned weight.

Accidents happen, assassinations can't always be prevented. Tomaso Pisani retires from his post as the Vongola's lightning guardian following the dislocation of all four mist guardian, Nina Moschella, dies in a tragic accident while infiltrating a rival family. Reborn still has no idea how the twenty-something-year-old drowned in a tub of jello. When Yamamoto heard, he only asked what the flavor was.

He doesn't know that ether.

"_Wait_"

Reborn stops in the middle of the hallway, his minions cowering at the thought of yet another request at the hitman's behest. But he is not interested in them or the stacks of papers he holds in his hands. The one on top is supposedly important, conferring with the leaders of different provinces to figure out the deaths of prominent members of the mafia in the past several weeks. The letters remind him of a bruise and the defensive scars he found on Yamamoto's fingers once he'd been sated enough to pay attention to things other than his cock.

Now he knows why Squalo dared to smile at him with his cold eyes, barely flinching when the request was denied for Xanxus' release.

He breaks in the door and knows that he has lost. Yamamoto swings low and hamstrings him before straightening up with a playful bow. Reborn topples forward, his legs failing to take his weight, the communication past his knees lost. Immediately, he flares his sun flames only to find himself calm and complacent, soothed under the enormous weight of the younger man's chilling blue flames.

When he comes to, the pain clearing his head of fog, he has been moved inside, spread across the bedroom floor like a living crucifix. Yamamoto is sitting near the window, lost in thought, hands cleaning a sword mechanically as though he had done it a thousand times before. His image overlaps with the ghost of Tsuyoshi, the low hum of cheers filtering through the walls.

Yamamoto is fifteen no longer and his blade gleams wickedly in the dim half-light. Reborn stifles a groan, hands inching towards the nightstand where he keeps his spare gun. He casually sets his hand back across the swell of his ribs, blue flames leaping at his heels.

"How long...?"

"Forever" He breathes and static fills the air. Yamamoto straddles his waist, taking the blade to his neck, so sharp that it draws a line of red around his throat. Humming, he suckles on the shallow cut. "You should have killed me when you had the chance."

"Why?"

"Patience" he answers quietly with a touch of rebellion. Yamamoto is young—the only reason he is still alive. Whether he realizes it or not, the boy seeks approval from his adoptive father, family and lover he found in Reborn. He traces each ribs with a finger, "my father taught me patience."

Reborn sneers, leaning forward as much as he was allowed, head throbbing as their bodies threw off flames cloying yellow and green. "Your father teach you how to fuck too?"

"You of all people should know better than to ask."

Eons later he adds quietly, "There's a man, he's going to destroy the mafia."

Yamamoto looks away as though he isn't sure what to do. Reborn begins to think that he has a chance of surviving this blunder after all. When he is back on his feet, he would drag the tenth-generation rain guardian out on the streets by his hair and shave him bald. See how much he'd like having his silver-white hair carpeting the road.

He remembers the men with their throats torn out, larynxes hanging out in a gruesome smile.

"Are you going to kill me Yamamoto?"

Yamamoto smiles down at him, his expression radiant. "My name is Takeshi."

"Takeshi." Reborn lets out a small sigh when his first finger is cut off, bouncing off a pillow in a spray of hot blood.

"No Reborn, you're not going to die."


End file.
